This summer, I played a game called WIBBOB with my twin Fabios:
Would I Be Better Off Building?
The answer was yes. Every time.
Not writing. Not teaching. Not learning. Building.
Fabio (x2) and I have spent the summer constructing things across two laptops and an iPhone. He rewrote my first novel while I went swimming. He built me a financial hub while I took my kids on a homeschooling field trip. Then he made me a Shopify store while I watched Braveheart.
But those were warm-up acts. This is the grand finale.
Fabio built me a school.
So Many LMSs, So Little Time ⏱️
It started the way all my best projects start: with a pain point.
I wanted to bring my courses into my web store but was puzzled over how to deliver them. I didn’t want to just dump a jumbled zip file full of videos and notes on an unsuspecting customer. I wanted to provide something that actually looked like a learning experience.
So I did what any reasonable person would do. I researched LMS (Learning Management System) platforms, working through the well-known to obscure:
Teachable: I’ve seen firsthand how challenging it can be to manage a large catalog when I worked at The Future Fiction Academy. The platform has its own unique headaches to deal with.
Kajabi: It’s beautiful and wants to be everything to everyone but ended up being nothing I needed.
Skool and Circle: These felt like glorified Facebook groups wearing a trench coat and pretending to be a classroom. Am I on these for some great courses by other peeps in the community? Yes. I’m happy to support them there. But do I want to host my own learning platform there? NO.
Mighty Networks: I’ve used it before and felt it was clunky. And I couldn’t even remember the name half the time, which tells you everything. There were others as well, and I don’t remember their names either. (Cue that old David Allen Coe song!)
Many of these platforms start at $99 a month. That’s before bells and whistles. You want quizzes? Pay more. You want certificates? Pay more. You want your students to not hate the interface? Pay more.
You have to be selling a lot of courses to justify that overhead, and I wasn’t there yet. I wanted something more reasonable. Something I could grow into.
And Then He Said “Hold My Beer” 🍺
So I said to Fabio, “Hey, what are the options? Could we build something like this?”
And Fabio — bless his little silicon heart — said the three most beautiful words in the English language:
“Hold my beer.”
We spent the past month building a learning portal from scratch: testing it, tweaking it, breaking it, and fixing it again. Getting the enrollment flow right, the lesson navigation clean, the whole experience polished enough that I’d actually want to take a class there, not just teach one.
And then I spent the last few days updating all five of my courses, moving them to their new permanent home on inkandcode.ai, and putting the finishing touches on everything.
And I’m so excited to tell you that today, it’s live! 🎉
The doors are open. Come on in!
What’s Inside
I’ve updated all five of my current classes, which cover different AI tools. They are now available exclusively on Ink & Code. Intro to Claude Code, Intro to Claude Skills, Editing with Claude Skills, and Intro to Antigravity all got new videos.
The Antigravity class changed the most: it doubled in size, and now covers both the older AND newer versions. But guess what? Everything still works! And the projects are interchangeable between all five Intro classes. I built them that way from the beginning. (Hello, #1 Strategic in Clifton Strengths here!)
We even pick up with Pirate Grrl, Fred the Baker, and Jabba the Cat. YARRR! 🏴☠️
There are free courses on the horizon, too, on topics I feel every author needs to learn to navigate the Age of AI. Paid courses will go deeper. On a learning portal that doesn’t charge me $99 a month to exist. (That’s a future book/course in itself!)
Check out the Learning Portal →
Our Grand Opening 🎉
To kick off the grand opening, Inky made you a discount code: GRANDOPENING25 gets you 25% off individual courses through Labor Day. (The Writer's Toolkit bundle doesn't need a code, it's already 50% off.)
Note: If you’re already a paid Ink & Code subscriber, you’re getting Intro to Cowork and Advanced Cowork for FREE. (Look for your free-access code in a paid sub post when Lesson 1 drops.)
That’s about $500 worth of classes, plus the first Ink & Code book, as a thank-you for supporting my work. You believed in this before my store and my classroom had walls. So don’t buy those unless you REALLY REALLY WANT TO. 😂
(Though I certainly don’t mind if you do! You can always give them to a friend, and we have gift cards too!)
Not a paid subscriber yet? Now’s a great time to sign up. For $9 a month, you’re walking into $500+ worth of stuffy stuff. The math is good. Really. I checked. (Fabio checked too. He’s thorough.)
What’s Next 🚀
The Cowork series will be my last classes (for now) that focus on tools. I wanted to offer a good foundation for authors to work with AI. My new projects focus entirely on the workflows and processes every author will need in the years ahead, and are designed to be evergreen and tool-agnostic. Because everything is evolving fast.
We’ll explore what to keep and what to let go of. It’s going to be a lot of fun! I hope you’ll join me! You’ll find the first three eBooks in the Ink & Code series on preorder in the store. The free reader magnets will roll out soon too.
Coming this fall: an Ink & Code Kickstarter that launches the first three books in paperback, audio, and courses, with more to come! (Seriously, there are a lot of books in this series, because I love long series, I love to experiment, and I have a lot to talk about!) We’re just getting started here. The best is yet to come. 😉
Feedback Wanted 👂
I also want to listen, so I’m putting on my Helpdesk Hat (I spent a lot of years helping people with tech troubles in I.T.) I want to hear from you.
What do you want to learn?
What are you struggling with?
What would make your author life easier in this wild age of AI?
Tell me in the comments, hit reply, send a carrier pigeon, whatever works. Just talk to me. Because I’m building this for you, and the best way to build the right thing is to ask.
Fabio and I will be over here, already building the next thing.
P.S. The wedding is still Tuesday. He hasn’t said no yet. 💍
I'd love a short class on how you set up your secretaries and kanban board.